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Reciprocal Teaching

Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity in which students become the teacher in small group reading sessions. Teachers model, then help students learn to guide group discussions using four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. Once students have learned the strategies, they take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading a dialogue about what has been read.

More comprehension strategies

Why use reciprocal teaching?

It encourages students to think about their own thought process during reading.

It helps students learn to be actively involved and monitor their comprehension as they read.

It teaches students to ask questions during reading and helps make the text more comprehensible.

How to use reciprocal teaching

Before Reciprocal Teaching can be used successfully by your students, they need to have been taught and had time to practice the four strategies that are used in reciprocal teaching (summarizing, questioning, predicting, clarifying).

One way to get students prepared to use reciprocal teaching: (from Donna Dyer of the North West Regional Education Service Agency in North Carolina)

Put students in groups of four.

Distribute one note card to each member of the group identifying each person's unique role:

Summarizer

Questioner

Clarifier

Predictor

Have students read a few paragraphs of the assigned text selection. Encourage them to use note-taking strategies such as selective underlining or sticky-notes to help them better prepare for their role in the discussion.

At the given stopping point, the Summarizer will highlight the key ideas up to this point in the reading.

The Questioner will then pose questions about the selection:

Unclear parts

Puzzling information

Connections to other concepts already learned

The Clarifier will address confusing parts and attempt to answer the questions that were just posed.

The Predictor can offer predictions about what the author will tell the group next or, if it's a literary selection, the predictor might suggest what the next events in the story will be.

The roles in the group then switch one person to the right, and the next selection is read. Students repeat the process using their new roles. This continues until the entire selection is read. (Source: ReadingQuest)

Throughout the process, the teacher's role is to guide and nurture the students' ability to use the four strategies successfully within the small group. The teacher's role is lessened as students develop skill.

Download blank templates

Here's a bookmark(360K PDF) for students to use that prompts them about each of the four strategies used in reciprocal teaching.

This worksheet(164K PDF) incorporates all four strategies into one page that students can fill out.

Similar to the bookmark above, this four-column handout(36K PDF)* prompts students with questions and statements related to the four strategies.

Watch reciprocal teaching in action

At Frank Love Elementary School, reading expert Shira Lubliner uses reciprocal teaching to guide students in learning to lead a classroom discussion. But first, Ms. Lubliner shows them how to guide a conversation about a book.

Examples

Language Arts

The following website shows an example of the Reciprocal Teaching strategy for the book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

I have been teaching for 27 years and have a Master's in Reading and I am Reading Recovery Trained and I have never heard of this strategy. It amazes me how we as educators are always learning and changing, I am excited to try this out with my RtI and ESL Groups this year. We have our kids prove their answers when answering question and I think this will be an excellent way to get them to start noticing where they can prove their answers. I LOVE this!!!!!

When I was a student, my learning process had included the four skills but not explicitly pointed out. I do ask kids to do part of these four in classroom, but have never tried all four in one process. I can't wait to try it. I think it will help kids' skill in reflection when in the process of thinking along with reading.

Just wondering -I have a child who struggles with comprehension issues and decoding strategies but has fluency. The school is doing a RTI for the next 12 weeks to document If he has a reading disability using this program . He has been in reading recovery for the last 2.5 years and did not have great progress but per LD director at school they can't test for LD because they were not doing interventions specifically for comprehension ??!?!???!? I'm sort of livid! But don't know if I have the right to be! Ahhhhkkk! Some input would be great - an upset parent oh and there doing this program one on one not in a group setting wich it seems like it's supposed to be in a group! -upset Mom

I have been using Reciprocal Teaching in my university ESL classes in Japan for nearly 20 years now, with everything from basic first year classes to "returnees" classes who are near-native speakers, as well as with fourth-year English majors. It works beautifully as the format and methodology for teaching content-based (CLIL) English classes with ESL students of many ages and levels of proficiency.

We are using this method in a college class. The goal is to understand how to use reciprocal reading, and then practice it within our class to see that it really does work. Reciprocal reading really works well, even at the college level. Actually, we find it to be quite fun and we have been able to get to know each other a little better.